13 Tzameti 2005

Critics score:
84 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Gela Babluani, according to the film's sparse press kit, is only 26 years old but already knows more about suspense than some filmmakers learn in a career. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: [Babluani] creates a fear so bottomless, a bad dream so plausible that its hooks tear into your consciousness. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: ... little substance and lots of fashionable cynicism. Read more

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The Babluanis are brothers to pay attention to. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: In a way, 13 (Tzameti) is a nearly gore-free take on Hostel, another film ... about desperate attempts to survive in a place that's simultaneously culturally and geographically alien. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Demands to be seen for the juice it manages to wring out of its central gambit but mostly for the directorial career it hints is on the horizon. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: Although it's likely too stark for everyone, 13 Tzameti offers a mind-blowing experience for anyone willing to go along for the ride. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 13 (Tzameti) might seem allegorical, but it's too cynically concerned with what works as entertainment to offer larger truths about human existence. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: French art thriller 13 Tzameti has a literal hair-trigger premise, yet it's so lacking in human dimensions that it creates virtually no suspense. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: It may be smarter than Saw II or Saw III, but it's just selling a classier brand of sadistic voyeurism. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: By the end ... audiences will need mass manicures. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: You can almost smell the nervous sweat running down these men's backs. You can almost feel the damp. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The resulting jolts add up to one unforgettably surreal nightmare. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: The Georgian-born French director Gela Babluani makes an absorbing debut with this black-and-white thriller. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: A tightly screwed shocker, a suspense tour de force that proceeds through a harrowing chain of events with alarming confidence. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Easier to admire than it is to sit through, the French film 13 (Tzameti) is an exercise in stylish depravity that may one day be viewed as the debut of a great filmmaker. Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: Read more

Rob Nelson, Village Voice: As a brutal metaphor for the global economy, 13 Tzameti takes care of business; its assertion that desperate means require desperate measures naturally extends to the hair-trigger world of genre filmmaking. Read more

Adriane Quinlan, Washington Post: The first film by a 26-year-old director (Gela Babluani) that feels like the worst of what a 26-year-old director could make. Read more